Luminous Landscape Forum
Equipment & Techniques => Pro Business Discussion => Topic started by: PeterAit on April 24, 2014, 07:45:11 am
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I am making a concerted effort to sell more prints of my photos. Part of this is a redesign of my website, and I am debating how to organize the photos, a system that will be most useful (and conducive to purchases) for the potential customer. I have three ideas
- The current organization is based on how I tend to see my photos, organized by trip and location - a portfolio for Alaska, one for New Zealand, one for the coast, etc. But where a photo was taken may not matter to the site visitor.
- Another idea is by theme, with separate portfolios for landscapes, nature details, architecture, urban, abstracts, and so on.
- Finally, the easiest approach is to put all photos together so visitors can browse the entire collection at the same time.
Thoughts and suggestions welcome!
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Peter, perhaps an idea might be to browse websites of other photographers who are doing something similar and see what feels most intuitive to you as a user. I have noticed that some sites have galleries arranged by trip- say Alaska, and another gallery by subject type, say birds. The same picture may appear in both galleries but thereby you cater for the buyer looking for a particular type of image or those scanning a broader set looking for inspiration!
Unless visitors are searching for you personally as a photographer, you might need to have a dedicated site for one subject such as 'Beautiful Pictures of Alaska.com'. Then they are buying onto the imager rather than you personally.
But then I do not hold myself expert in this regard. My pictures are all sold from commissioned shoots so they are directed straight to the relevant gallery.
Jim
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Great idea, Jim! You are right, there's no reason a photo must be in only one portfolio.
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Great idea, Jim! You are right, there's no reason a photo must be in only one portfolio.
Quite. Think of the portfolios as Lightroom collections: there's no limit to the number in which a particular shot might appear. Gives the initial impression that you're more prolific, too ;)
Jeremy
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Hi,
You can also embed keywords in the metadata of your images using Lightroom or Bridge.
Your website gallery software should be able to read/extract this metadata upon upload of your images.
Then you can use those keywords as links to virtual galleries on your pages.
Theo
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If you are hoping to sell, why not use keywords and a search function, so people can look for things they may specifically be after?
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Peter,
If you are still interested... I am going through the same exercise and have found a happy median with Zenfolio. I have Galleries set up by theme for Landscapes (with various sub-categories such as coasts, mountains, waterfalls, etc.), Nature (w/ sub-cats), Travel (sub-cats are identifiable places, so previous photos may appear again), etc.
The feature I like as a corollary is the search function, to allow users to put their own keywords in, so they can ignore my categories if they wish.
Maybe I'm alone in this, but one thing that bugs me as a viewer/user is when I see the same photo again and again and again on the same site, but under different categories. To me, it says the photographer doesn't have a lot of depth, so I am working hard at not having the same photo in more than two (rarely three) galleries/sub-categories.
Terry
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...one thing that bugs me as a viewer/user is when I see the same photo again and again and again on the same site, but under different categories. To me, it says the photographer doesn't have a lot of depth,...
Agreed. It discourages me from browsing more categories.
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Maybe I'm alone in this, but one thing that bugs me as a viewer/user is when I see the same photo again and again and again on the same site, but under different categories. To me, it says the photographer doesn't have a lot of depth, so I am working hard at not having the same photo in more than two (rarely three) galleries/sub-categories.
Terry
+1
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Peter,
If you are still interested... I am going through the same exercise and have found a happy median with Zenfolio. I have Galleries set up by theme for Landscapes (with various sub-categories such as coasts, mountains, waterfalls, etc.), Nature (w/ sub-cats), Travel (sub-cats are identifiable places, so previous photos may appear again), etc.
The feature I like as a corollary is the search function, to allow users to put their own keywords in, so they can ignore my categories if they wish.
Maybe I'm alone in this, but one thing that bugs me as a viewer/user is when I see the same photo again and again and again on the same site, but under different categories. To me, it says the photographer doesn't have a lot of depth, so I am working hard at not having the same photo in more than two (rarely three) galleries/sub-categories.
Terry
I have been thinking about this and decided to have 2 "sets" of categories. One set will be more-or-less as it is now, based primarily on where taken - Alaska, Nicaragua, coast, etc. The other set will be based on type of photo - landscape, urban/architecture, nature detail, etc. No specific photo will be in > 2 categories. I suppose I might have a "view all" link for the adventuresome!